A year of Matthew Stafford and Knowshon Moreno followed by a season without them will make you realize things. “I think I have learned, too, you have to have good players,” he said. “I think good players help you win football games.”

[H]ow much more would the NFL make if the regular season was expanded to 18 games and the preseason was cut to 2 games? . . .

Why is Roger Goodell advocating for the players to play less and make less money per-game? Doesn’t he know that the NFL won’t really make that much extra money from moving to an 18-game season? The question to that is almost certainly yes, so why does he do this?

[T]here really is a level of popular discontent over the 4-game preseason, especially from media people and season ticket holders who feel like they’re getting screwed. These people, especially the latter, are probably wrong. . . . Proposing an expanded regular season allows Roger Rex to make nice with these people.

. . . . I don’t think the NFL is, or at least should be, particularly serious about the 18-game season. If my numbers are close to right, it doesn’t make anywhere near as much money as you’d expect from a basic 16 to 18 game comparison, and the players really don’t like it. It is, instead, primarily a negotiating tactic and media ploy, and should and will be dropped when the labor negotiations get serious.

Because curiosity is ultimately an emotion, an inexplicable itch telling us to keep on looking for the answer, it can take advantage of all the evolutionary engineering that went into our dopaminergic midbrain. (Natural selection had already invented an effective motivational system.) When Einstein was curious about the bending of space-time, he wasn’t relying on some newfangled circuitry. Instead, he was using the same basic neural system as a rat in a maze, looking for a pellet of food.

Chris, what type of terminology would you recommend to line up in your Offensive formations?

Conversely…

Why haven’t college or NFL defense’s evolved and developed a better way to communicate quickly to adjust to the many different ideas with which they are attacked?

Jesse

Chris, could you maybe talk a little about what Saban is saying about how they stopped Texas’ runs with 5 in the box? Maybe I just cant hear/see what he is saying, but I don’t think I fully understand.

Is it simply the Nose two-gapping with his gaps and the Mike’s dependent on how Texas is blocking?

http://edsbs.com Johnny

Jesse, in Sabans Defense, Mt. Cody always demanded a double team, and in turn, the Mike LB was always able to read the offense,roam free and mainly unimpeded and without much guessing, pretty much get a good read on the play, the type of blocking and shut anything down that was headed to the outside. What Texas had done in the past all keyed off of McCoy and the type of spread they ran. They had no dominant run game to study. Of course this didnt have to last as long since the key, McCoy, was out pretty quickly and they had to go to their basic defense since Gilbert was a totally different QB than they had prepared for. Saban kinda figured out that they wouldn’t try anything exotic and basically the offense would be much of what you would expect out of your freshmen QB, so they took more chances with blitzes, and the kid made some good throws to their other playmaker, Shipley, which was surprising, and a compliment to a kid who had basically been thrown to the wolves and made some good passes to keep Bama honest. Otherwise, he would have been killed.

Scott

How to stop Texas running game with 5 men in the box, by Nick Saban

First, take the Maxwell-Award winning, Walter Camp- Award Winning, Heisman finalist Quarterback out of the game and have them put in a true freshman as his replacement. After 57.5 minutes you will have a 3 point lead……